


We Saw Hell Through The Mists

by Dikhotomia



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Silent Hill Fusion, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Edelgard Does Not Have a Good Day: The FIc, F/F, Mindfuck, Monsters, Mystery, Psychological Horror, The Silent Hill AU no one asked for but I wanted, past trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:02:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26779312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: "She gives up, gives in, drifting back underneath the haze with the image of Nurses crowding around her bedside. Someone saying something she can't hear beyond a cotton-stuffed muffle.She aches, she doesn't.The next time she wakes up she's alone and she feels like she shouldn't be; she feels like there's a piece missing and she hasn't quite figured out how to fit the rest of the puzzle together because of it. It's quiet, if not too quiet for a hospital.  The drone of machines is absent, the noise and shuffle of nurses and Doctors and visitors is nothing but a whisper of memory. She fits in the what should be and frowns at the distinct absence of it."ORFE3H Silent Hill AU
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & My Unit | Byleth, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 57





	1. She's Gone, She's Gone, She's Gone (Away)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to flibety for the beta and a shout out to both flibety and Ashtree for helping me sort this shit out.

Waking up in the hospital wasn't something she expected, littered with bandages, confused, and panicked. Her memory was a mess of things, of screaming tires and Byleth reaching for her just as the truck that blasted through the stoplight smashed into them. Then it's nothing, a blank, and no matter how much she tries to reach into the darkness for an answer she always comes up with nothing.

Sand through a sieve.

She gives up, gives in, drifting back underneath the haze with the image of Nurses crowding around her bedside. Someone saying something she can't hear beyond a cotton-stuffed muffle.

She aches, she doesn't.

The next time she wakes up she's alone and she feels like she shouldn't be; she feels like there's a piece missing and she hasn't quite figured out how to fit the rest of the puzzle together because of it. It's quiet, if not too quiet for a hospital. The drone of machines is absent, the noise and shuffle of nurses and Doctors and visitors is nothing but a whisper of memory. She fits in the what should be and frowns at the distinct absence of it.

_Where is everybody?_

That distinct sense of _wrong_ continues to rattle about in her back of her mind as she moves, slow and stiff like someone walking through deep water. There are parts of her that aren't quite willing to respond fully; a few fingers that don't twitch, a foot that feels more like a lead weight than a limb. But she rises anyway, slipping off the edge of her hospital bed and easing herself along the side of it, stumbling to the wall.

Progress is slow, agonizing, and taxing, her heart thundering in her ears as her breath saws through her lungs. She thinks by now a nurse should be here, telling her she needed to lie back down, that

she shouldn't be up on her feet yet. 

Instead, the halls are eerily empty; stretchers and wheelchairs left abandoned, nurses stations looking like their occupants just up and disappeared without a trace. She leans against the nearest counter, hunched over, forehead pressed to the cool wood as she just breathes, trying to ignore the ache that has started in her body again, it crawls slow up from her legs to her midsection, blossoming through her ribs and her chest. It makes it hard to breathe, each intake of air a pained wheeze.

Across from her something shifts, a chair squeaking, papers hissing as they're knocked aside to the floor. She looks up to the sight of something that could barely be described as human, a bastardization twisted through with glass and torn metal, flesh burned and blotchy and melting off in places to reveal the skeleton beneath. Twisted fingers reach for her, blood smear against countertops, shards of glass screeching jarringly in it's wake. 

She can't move, every part of her body suddenly numb and unresponsive. She can only watch, transfixed on the horror stumbling it's way towards her, rasping and wheezing and seemingly trying to speak. It's half words incoherent and dripping past it's torn lips.

"No," she whispers, struggling to even shake her head. "Stay back." 

It keeps coming, both hands extended towards her. 

"Stop," she says, her voice thready through the rising tide of panic.

_'Ms. Hresvelg?'_

The creature stops, shuddering and blurring her vision, one version of the world suddenly superimposed over the other. 

She was at the nurse's station, she was still in bed.

_'Doctor, I think she's waking up. Ms. Hresvelg, can you hear me?'_

_Yes, wake up, wake up, wake up, **wake up** -_

\-----

Waking up again is a different experience, this time there's people, this time she can hear the machines beside her bed working, beeping, hissing, and clicking. Her head spins and her body is nothing but a frayed nerve dulled by the painkillers being fed into the IV she can feel taped to her hand. A part of her wants to go back to sleep, exhaustion still dragging at her and threatening to pull her back under the tide with it.

But another part of her doesn't want to go back to the empty hospital and the creature that lurked there. 

"Ms. Hresvelg? Can you focus on me?" 

She blinks, slowly shifting her eyes to the source of the voice, a Doctor whose face and name she doesn't know. But she wouldn't, she wasn't even aware she was brought to the hospital, could hardly recall why she was here in the first place. 

"Good," the Doctor says, voice low and soothing. Nearby she hears a Nurse shuffling about, checking vitals and various other things. "Can you tell me your full name?"

It takes her a few tries to find her voice, to figure out how to operate her tongue when it feels more like a slab of meat sitting in her mouth. The answer comes out in halves at first, slurred before she swallows and tries again. "Edelgard Hresvelg." She can remember other basics when the Doctor asks, birthday, marital status, who her parents were, who her in-laws are. The Doctor notes everything down, checking her ability to focus, her ability to feel and to move. He nods once, seemingly satisfied for the moment.

"Do you remember what happened?" It's a gentler inquiry, his stool creaking slightly as he sits forward a little. 

"N-Not really," she murmurs, frowning. "An accident, I think?" Shattering glass, Byleth--Byleth....

_Byleth?_

"Where's my wife?" she asks next, looking away from the Doctor. "Is she okay?" 

"She's fine," the Doctor replies, bringing her attention back. "She was released recently, and sat with you for a few days before she went home to get some things. She did say she might not be back right away, and to tell you not to worry if you woke up before she did."

 _Of course you would_...she thinks, closing her eyes. "How long have I been out?"

"About three and a half weeks," the Doctor answers, sitting back again. "You took the brunt of the impact in the crash, so your injuries were much more severe," he says, going straight for honesty, and Edelgard appreciates him for it, even if someone else might not. She thinks she's lucky she wasn't crushed, thinks she's lucky she can still feel every part of her body even if it wasn't quite willing to fully respond to her commands yet.

She thinks she's lucky her bones fractured instead of broken, that her head trauma wasn't as severe as the Doctors worried. She thinks she's lucky that considerable bruising and deep lacerations were what was included on the rest of the list.

The Doctor tells her to rest more and she takes his advice, dipping in and out of sleep, eating and drinking, and slowly regaining her strength back. It's an agonizing process, one she gets more and more frustrated with as hours and days crawl by at a snail's pace.

Byleth never comes back, but the hospital does manage to get in touch with her and inform her of what's going on. A nurse tells her later, informing her that her wife had wanted to speak with her, but she had been asleep. The nurse tells her that Byleth had wished for her to recover quickly, and promised to come pick her up whenever she was released.

She calls her later, but doesn't get an answer, leaving her frowning at the phone. She tells herself Byleth just got busy, that maybe she got sidetracked and Edelgard will find her at home knee-deep in some new project, bashfully apologetic for losing track of time. She hopes as she goes through her gauntlet of testing and exercise, of letting the Doctor's make sure everything is healing right.

She loses track of the time eventually, days running together until it's nothing but a blur of faces and activities. Eventually, she finds herself standing out on the steps of the hospital, fall drizzle dripping off the awning, leaving everything with a distinct sheen dulled by the slate gray of the sky. For a moment she stands there, appreciating the scent of wet cement and humidity, eyes lifting to watch the way the clouds roll by over head.

For a moment she stands there, taking in all the things she had taken for granted-

_'But did you? Did you really appreciate everything you had taken for granted? Did you realize just how short life is? How fragile humans really are?'_

\------

She's somewhere else again, rain on her face, mud, and ash on her tongue. She can smell burnt plastic and see twisted metal. For a few seconds, she has no idea where she is anymore, the mist too thick to make out her surroundings beyond the road and the car she had pulled herself from. She remembers the crash, remembers the looming, void-like shadow that had stepped out in front of her, forcing her to slam on the brakes.

The same looming, abyssal shadows now form out of the mist, coalescing into human-shaped figures dressed entirely in cobbled together tactical gear. For a second she doesn't understand where she actually is, eyes widening, adrenaline roaring up through her veins as she tries to scramble back from the people approaching her.

"Who the hell are you people?" She demands, her fingers hitting the edge of a piece of her car that had broken off. "Don't come any closer!" She hefts the metal as a warning, forcing sore muscles to work as she draws herself into a crouch. She didn't know how to feel, didn't know if she was gearing up to attack people who had come to help her or...

 _Or not._ She thinks, the sight of a metal pipe in the hand of one of them telling her all she needed to know. She was outnumbered and her ankle hurt enough that she wasn't going to be able to run very fast or very far, which left her very...very low on options. 

Ingrid's words filter through as the group closes in a bit more, as she takes her first swing and is met with all of them moving at once. A foot fits her ribs, her fist finds an exposed chin, her elbow a solar plexus.

The kidnappings, the ritual murders, Byleth's disappearance. All of it linked back to a single town, to the town she had chosen to come to and now was left wondering if she had even made it.

She tastes blood as a forearm catches her in the mouth, her vision sparking and blurring with a blow to her already aching head. She hisses, shaking it off and surging up against the hands that grab her, striking out with her elbows and her feet. It's a vicious, desperate struggle, one she begins to lose as hands seize firmer holds, as another blow sends her reeling, her ankle sparking it's protest at her weight suddenly being forced on it.

The impact of the pipe against the back of her head rings in her ears, a new kind of pain splintering up through her skull as darkness eats at the corners of her vision. What a cheap shot, she thinks, glaring even as her consciousness wanes, feet dragging in the mud as she's pulled along between the group. The world dulls and fades out, slipping her unwillingly into unconsciousness.

\-------

Coming home was not at all what she expected, it was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be happy, not painful. Byleth was supposed to be here, not another name on a list of missing people sitting somewhere on some officer's desk. Ingrid looks at her with a kind of sadness that speaks more volumes than anything she could possibly say. 

"I'm sorry," she says, voice quiet, like she's been dreading delivering the news since the moment she found out. "We're doing everything we can to find her, but with all the people already missing..."  
Edelgard nods, numb, letting Hubert lead her over to the couch to sit down. "When?" she asks, looking up at the other woman. "Did you find out she disappeared?"

"A few days ago, Dorothea came over to check on her like she had been since Byleth got out of the hospital...but when she didn't answer she got worried. She tried to call her and got nothing, then called me...and well..." Ingrid trails off, waving a hand at the half-cleaned apartment, dust coating surfaces and dishes soaking in the sink.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Edelgard asks, a small spark of anger burning low. But she already knows why; they didn't want to worry her while she was still recovering in the hospital. They wanted her to focus on getting better, on getting her strength back.

"I'm sure you already know why," Ingrid says, smiling sadly. "But we also weren't sure if she was missing or had simply gone to stay elsewhere and forgot to tell us. I followed up on that, I went and saw her parents, and even your mom and step-brother and no one had seen her."

So Ingrid had to add her to the list. She can imagine the other woman at her desk, adding all of the details to a profile she had never wanted to write, the reality of it all slowly sinking in.

"Fuck," she mutters, resting her face in her hands. "Is there anything I can do?" she asks, desperate, needing to do something beyond just sit here, wait and hope.

"Just keep an eye out for anything suspicious," Ingrid says, shrugging slightly. "We think this might be some kind of cult."

"A cult?" Hubert asks, frowning. "Is it because of the murders?" Ingrid cringes, shooting him a look over the top of Edelgard's head. "She'll find out sooner or later anyway," Hubert says, shrugging. "You might as well tell her everything."

Ingrid sighs, rubbing a hand down her face. "Yes, fine. It is because of the murders. They've been very ritualistic in nature and all of the bodies have been found relatively in the same area, but the disappearances are all over New England...so it's hard to pin point exactly how large this...cult actually is."

"Which area?" Edelgard asks, pressing when she knows she shouldn't, wanting as many answers as she could possibly get even if she couldn't do anything with the information.

"In Maine, outside a resort town, Silent Hill. We have officers there checking stuff out but so far they haven't found anything." Ingrid sighs, resting her hands on her hips and looking down at the floor. "It's such a normal-looking town, I mean it has a pretty shady history but that's not anything new."

"They're well hidden then," Edelgard whispers, sighing. "I see."

She hates it, hates the feeling of helplessness that sits in the pit of her stomach. That lingers long after Ingrid leaves with a whispered apology and a promise to keep her up to date. It turns sour as she sits in the bathroom while Hubert cuts her hair, the hum of the razor echoing in her ears. She hates herself for doing something so mundane with the knowledge she has, but she still does it.

Still tries to find some semblance of normalcy after Hubert leaves. She showers, she eats, stares vacantly at the TV without really ever seeing what's playing on it. She doesn't sleep, instead cleaning the apartment and working out until her body tells her to stop.

_'That's no way to live...'_

\------

" _Please, El, I need help._ " Static, ugly, and unyielding, maiming words and making them almost impossible to hear. " _I'm in Silent Hill, I don't know what happened or how I got here but please....please I can't-_ "

She snaps awake with the memory playing on loop in the back of her mind, consciousness coming back with a warning. She wasn't where she should be, her surroundings a twisted mess of crumbling concrete, tile and peeling paint and the hospital bed she's been left on. 

Tied to. 

Her eyes shift down to the sight of the leather straps binding her wrists and her ankles, panic rising hot and metallic in the back of her throat. "What the fuck?" she whispers, struggling, fruitlessly pulling at binds that clang harshly against the handrails. It's bad, it's worse, fear making her heart race and her breath come too quickly, the tips of her fingers beginning to tingle and go numb.

 _Those people_ , she thinks, looking around the room again. It's just as much of a mess as she originally thought, a light hanging from the ceiling, pieces of the wall crumbled onto the floor to reveal the rusted steel skeleton underneath. The scent of mildew and rot stings in her nose and she forces herself calm, breathing in through her mouth and out. 

She shifts, fingers pressing together as tightly as she can as she attempts to slip just one hand free. Tugging and twisting until she feels something loosen. Didn't fasten the straps tight enough, she thinks, yanking one hand free and freezing as she hears something in the hallway. For a second she wonders if those people had come back for her, but the sound...the sound, tells her whatever is out there isn't human.

Edelgard holds her breath, staring at the door as she listens to it pass. Each breath a horrible shuddering wheeze, each step scraping and agonizingly slow. It gurgles and chokes and whines, high and thready and mad, peeling off into a giggle that makes her blood run cold. The seconds drag by, time seemingly standing still while whatever is out there wanders by, chattering incessantly.

She doesn't move, ignoring the burn in her lungs, every sense focused on the half-opened door. Nothing ever comes through and it isn't until silence settles again that she dares even draw a breath, waiting even longer before she moves again, undoing the rest of the straps and sliding off the edge of the bed. Her ankle is not happy about it and the back of her head throbs a little, but she ignores both, inching across the room before peering out the door, looking both ways down the hall.

Nothing. Nothing but an empty, crumbling hallway and a wheelchair sitting against the wall, metal rusted over and seat stained with something she doesn't want to know. She slips out, back to the wall as she makes her way down the hallway. She has no idea where she is, has no idea how to get out of this place.

So she looks, choosing hallways to go down, slipping into rooms that look like offices and searching, coming up with only Doctor's notes and patient files that are too stained to be legible. One room contains nothing but a massive bloodstain, stark against the grimy tile. Another is just a mess, beds all flipped over and left in a pile in the center of the room. Some stained, some as pristine as one could expect in a place like this.

"This is a mess," she mutters, stopping before a glass case containing a fire axe. "Well, hello, aren't you convenient," she adds, looking both ways and listening before smashing her elbow into the glass, cringing at just how loud the sound ends up behind. But this place has proven she needs it, needs something to defend herself from the people that had left her here.

Against what might still be wandering here in this hospital.

"What is it with me and hospitals?" She asks herself as she hefts the axe between her hands, testing it's weight. "This is the second one I've been in in so many months..."

At least the first one had been much nicer.

She cringes at the thought as she casts another glance around, trying not to think too hard about what might have happened here to turn it into the state it was in. She wonders instead what it might look like outside, wonders if wherever it was built was as abandoned and decrepit as this building.

 _Time to find out_ , she thinks, picking a direction and walking.

"Please, don't!"

She freezes, stilling completely at the sound of a voice carrying from further down the hallway, followed shortly after by laughter and the clatter of metal.

"It'll be your turn soon," another voice says, amused, malicious even. "Then you won't have to worry anymore will you?"

_'You're left with a choice aren't you? Go help, or leave them to their fate.'_

She goes, gripping her axe tighter.


	2. Add Violence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'Madness is as much an idea as it is an affliction; a thought, a word, an action repeated over and over and over again until it's tainted the mind, twisted it into something opposing the norms society sets upon each and every one of you. You praise Gods, You praise leaders, you praise yourselves._
> 
> _Are you not all mad already?'_

_'Madness is as much an idea as it is an affliction; a thought, a word, an action repeated over and over and over again until it's tainted the mind, twisted it into something opposing the norms society sets upon each and every one of you. You praise Gods, You praise leaders, you praise yourselves._

**_Are you not all mad already?_ ** _'_

"Why are you doing this?!"

Edelgard slows as she gets closer to the voices, fingers sliding along the rough metal of the axe in her hands. She has no way of knowing what she's about to walk in to, no idea what she's about to see, what she's about to have to do.

_'You could have walked away, turned the other cheek just like everyone else always does.'_

_No,_ she thinks, taking a breath and holding it. That wasn't at all like her, she wasn't one to just turn the other cheek and pretend something bad wasn't happening nearby her. But there was a vast difference in her situation compared to the others. Before, she had the ability to call for help, now all she had was herself and the choices she made. 

_'And those choices? They will come back to haunt you. Choose wisely, because the world will view you differently and will shape you differently, depending on what you do next.'_

"What I do next, huh?" she whispers, frowning, fully registering the strange timber in the back of her mind. A presence both so familiar and foreign she had no idea what to feel about it, just that she knew it had been there a long time, it's voice an accompaniment since she had woken up in the hospital that day.

"Please! Please don't do this! We have done anything wrong!"

She takes that last step, rounding the corner in time to see one of the people from before ramming the handle of a sledgehammer into the face of the girl pleading for her life. She falls back, blood oozing from her nose and tears pooling in her eyes. The man beside her moves, struggling against his own restraints in a fury only a family member might feel. The two look related, hair and eyes, facial features.

Terror.

The girl sees her first, her eyes widening in a mix of hope and desperation, her jaw working as she struggles to call out for help. It's enough to catch the attention of the guard, and her eyes jump to him as he turns, fixing her with a look that immediately sets her on edge.

"Silver hair tied in a short ponytail, undercut, violet eyes....torn jeans, military boots, burgundy leather coat and a black turtleneck....you're the girl they dragged in off the road recently, eh? It's not your turn yet. So scamper off back to your room," he says with a sneer, tilting his head to one side.

"I don't think so," she says, resting the axe against her shoulder. "I'm in the exact opposite mood to do what I'm told right now." Especially by people hellbent on hurting others for some...deranged reason she couldn't figure out. Even more so since, apparently, she too was now on this little list of ritual murder.

"No?" he says, glancing at her, then at the two people nearby. "Then, let me guess, you want to leave right? They all want to leave, but you can't do that without a key. We keep the doors locked tight."

Her jaw ticks, teeth clenching. "Wouldn't want your sacrifices escaping, would you?" she asks, taking a wild shot in the dark and hoping to hit her mark anyway. "That'd be bad for business."

He shifts and so does she, adrenaline flaring up with the return of her fear. Suddenly she was starting to understand what the mysterious voice in the back of her mind meant by 'choice,' and she didn't like it.

"It would be bad for business, but at the same time, if they escape, we'll catch them again eventually. How's this, little lady, pick who dies and I'll give you the key to get out of here and you can see how long you'll last in this town." His focus shifts back to the two on the floor, the man having pulled himself as close to the girl as he could get, glaring at them both to hide the fear very clearly visible underneath. The girl has hidden herself against him as best she can, body shuddering with muffled sobs.

_'If you choose the daughter, the father will come after you with a desire for revenge, he'll never forgive you until you've suffered in kind for the death of his child. Kill the father and the daughter will resent you with all of her heart, curse you for being a monster so willing to kill for her own gain._

_Or choose neither..._

_However, someone must die.'_

"Do you honestly think I'm going to play this sick game of yours?" Edelgard asks, appalled. "I'm not going to murder an innocent person for..." she trails off, frowning. "For whatever you people are trying to do."

"Placating God," he replies, smiling. 

"Oh we're that level of cult," Edelgard says, swallowing around the knot of fear making itself at home in her throat. "I refuse." 

"Then you won't get the key," he says, hooking his thumb around the object hanging around his neck. It draws her eyes down to it, fixating on the heavy key that sits on the end of a thick chain. She knows the only way to get it is to humor him...or kill him.

Both thoughts make her sick, her expression twisting to mirror the disgust she feels. She's never killed someone, never even thought about killing someone until just this moment, directly confronted with the lowest point of human brutality. 

"Do I really need a key?" she asks, shifting her grip on her axe, the weight of it against her shoulder and in her hand bringing a strange sense of calm that doesn't bother her as much as she wanted it to. "I mean, there's always another way out, isn't there."

The man laughs, gesturing with the sledgehammer. "Be my guest, but to get here I'm sure you already saw the state this place is in. Windows are all barred, fire escapes are locked, nah, girly, you aren't getting out of here unless someone dies. God might even turn it's favor on you if you sacrifice for it."

She scowls, shifting her weight as she considers the options again. To kill him and take the key, or to leave and find another way out. Leaving meant damming two innocent people to death, murder meant her becoming no different from the man in front of her. Either way, both choices would sit ugly on her conscience, even if killing the cultist meant one less of them running amok and kidnapping people to sacrifice.

"I'm not a murderer," she spits. "And I don't give a shit about your God."

Or any God for that matter.

It's the wrong thing to say, watching as the cultist's expression shifts from smug to furious and the two people on the ground look up in shock at her audacity. She wonders if they were from this town, wonders if maybe they knew something about this place that she didn't.

"Alright girly," he says, drawing her attention back. "Maybe it can be your turn, the boss might be angry at me for killin’ you so soon, but he's just gonna have to get over it. You don't get to disrespect our God like that."

"Won't your God be angry if you give it a nonbeliever?" she asks, searching for the weaknesses in his patchwork armor, loathing what she might have to do. "If you give it someone who hates Gods and religion with her entire being?"

"No," the man says, hefting his hammer. "It just means God has time to show you the love no other deity has before. May you find peace."

Too many things happen at once, the girl screams, the man shouts, covering the girl with his body as the cultist charges, howling in rage and lifting his hammer up into an overhead swing that would kill her if it impacts. She catches sight of a flash of skin at his throat and makes her decision, scrambling out of the way of his first swing, the hammer whizzing by her to crack harshly against the floor.

It stuns him, the impact shuddering up through his arms and leaving him disorientated long enough for her to swing, the axe burying itself at home in his throat in an awful spray of blood. It's warm where it hits her face and spills across her hands, her grip slipping as the cultist gurgles, grasping for her and for the axe before he falls to the floor at her feet, twitching and gasping for breath.

For a second she doesn't know how to react, every facet of her brain refusing to compute the action she had just gone through. Refusing to believe that a man was dying at her feet and that she was now covered in his blood. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to be sick and she gets halfway to one, a short hysterical hiccup escaping her before someone was whispering harshly.

"The key!" 

She glances from the dying man to the two people nearby, both of them looking at her with a mix of horror and hope and she finds herself wondering what she must look like to them, covered in blood and horrified at her own actions. It takes her a few drawn-out moments to finally force her body to move, bending down enough to pull the axe free and pluck the shattered chain from around his neck, her fingers slipping in the blood covering both. Her hands shake, and her heart pounds as nausea wells sour in the back of her throat.

But she keeps moving, telling herself that she has to. That no matter what she had to find Byleth and get her out of here before something horrible happens to her.That is, if something hadn't already happened to her.

No, she tells herself, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head. No, she would find Byleth safe and they would get out of here and go home and Edelgard could pretend this was one really horrible nightmare. It was the only way she was going to be able to justify anything she was presented with.

Whatever was in the hallways, the cultist, the voice in the back of her head. This entire place.

_'You've only touched the tip of the iceberg.'_

She ignores it as she walks over to the two, pausing when the girl shrinks away from her, pressing herself as close against the man as she could. "It's okay," he says, holding up his bound hands. "She's going to help us, right?"

"Yea," she rasps, nodding. "I am." She uses the axe to cut through the zip ties binding him, grimacing at the blood she gets on his shirt sleeves while she does. He doesn't comment on it, immediately urging the girl to do the same, getting her to hold her hands up while she cuts her free, slow and steady, keeping her eyes anywhere but either of their faces.

"There," she mutters, straightening and moving by them. "Now let's get the hell out of here." 

"Thank you," the man says from behind her, stopping her and bringing her attention back to him. "I know that couldn't have been easy for you to be forced to do...but you helped us. We won't forget that."

"Do you know anything about this place?" she asks, pushing forward again, hearing their steps as they follow her. "You seemed like you might." The conversation is a distraction, something else to focus on beyond the blood drying on her hands and the body she's leaving cooling on the floor behind them.

She knows she has to keep moving, to keep focused on the task at hand.

Because if she doesn't, she knows she'll fall apart, already struggling to swallow and ignore the burn in her eyes from the tears threatening to fall, nausea still roiling in her gut each time she even remotely pays attention to it.

"No," the man says, a little closer now. "We were taken from our home one night and woke up here, the only difference is we've heard those men talking about their God a lot more then you have. They're fanatical, and anyone who says or believes otherwise is killed."

That explained both everything, and nothing all at once. "Is this really Silent Hill?" she asks, exhaling as they round the next corners to the sight of the lobby and the door, all of it just as torn up and aged as the rest of the building. 

"I'm...not sure," the man says. "It's....all wrong."

Well, that wasn't good.

'Outside', they discover, isn't much better. And Edelgard pauses to stare at the sight, cracked and torn up streets, scorched from some kind of fire. The mist makes it almost impossible to see much further and she gives up trying to see instead of further straining her eyes, looking back over her shoulder at the two following her.

They look as confused and shocked as she feels and she turns back to the sight in front of them, breathing in and out and stomping down on the urge to rub a hand down her face. She's reminded of the blood there, finding herself drawn to look down at the ugly red of it staining her skin and blending in with the arms of her coat. 

The nausea crawls back, burning in the back of her throat and becoming a rising tide of panic that forces her breath short and makes her hands shake all over again. She crumbles slowly, axe slipping from her hands as she drops down onto the steps of the hospital, sobbing, hating herself for doing it when two people are still right there with her.

Neither of them says anything, but she hears someone approaching moments before a warm hand rests against her shoulder, squeezing.

She tucks her head between her knees, breathing. "It's over now," the girl says, lowering herself down beside her, rubbing her back. "Everything's going to be okay."

Was it? She wanted to ask, choking out a laugh. Was it really going to be okay? No.

No.

Not until she got Byleth back.

It still takes her forever to pull herself back together, to stop the shaking and the sobbing and her stomach from threatening to turn itself inside out. She inhales and exhales and coughs, burying her face against the crook of her elbow.

"Fuck," she whispers, then again, looking up at the street in front of them. She couldn't sit here feeling sorry for herself, didn't have time to process everything that had happened until she knew her wife was safe. "You two should get out of here," she says, slowly standing up. "Never know when more of those people will show up."

"You can't expect us to just leave you," the man says, raising his eyebrows.

"Yea, I can," she replies, looking at him. "Because I'm looking for someone, and I'm not leaving until I find her." And neither of them had any reason to hang around while she ran off into the mist and searched, fought and probably killed more to do it.

She didn't want to, hated that she even had to resort to it or consider it.

But-

"There, on the steps!"

They all turn in unison to the sight of more cultists bursting out of the mist, each of them armed. Some with hammers, some with axes and a few with guns. Edelgard bends down to pick up her own axe, fury overtaking her fear. "Get out of here!" She shouts, glancing at the two before she heads down the steps, determined to meet the coming men head-on.

She doesn't see what they do before she's swarmed, swinging her axe in a wide arch at the group to keep them back. 

But the fight doesn't last long, all of them freezing as a siren winds up in the distance, it's low wail rising in pitch as it cycles, rebounding down the empty streets as an eerie echo.

The cultists grab her in her confusion, hauling her along in a panic. "We must go," one says, pulling her even as she tries to resist. "Quickly, the church is the only safe place."

"And why the hell would I go there?" She asks, risking a glance over her shoulder. The two she was with are gone, and she watches in quiet horror as the mist begins to churn, burning away as the gray light of the sky becomes blood red and the city begins to burn around them, flames flickering through the smoke now thick in the air.

"Because nothing but death awaits you out here," someone among the group says, hurrying her along.

She lets them lead her along finally, vowing to get answers.

_'Be careful what you wish for, child.'_


End file.
